Robert Lewandowski isn’t the best goalscorer in Germany

What if I told you that the best goalscorer in Germany isn’t a Polish International with experience in the World Cup, the Champions League, and the Bundesliga? What if a baker, who works the night shift, scored more goals this year than Bayern Munich’s Robert Lewandowski? What if the baker played alongside a butcher and candlestick maker?

OK, so, while I am not sure about the butcher and the candlestick maker, I am sure that Germany’s top goal-scorer is a 27-year-old baker named Dennis Teuber. He scored 79 more goals than Lewandowski’s 22! If you don’t have a calculator nearby, I’ll help you out. That’s 101 goals, and in only 27 matches. That comes out to 3.74 goals per match.

SportBild (paywall) visited what was supposed to be Teuber’s last match of the season for VfB Habinghorst. Habinghorst plays in the Kreisliga (district-league) B1 in Herne, a city in North Rhine-Westphalia. Teuber’s masterful goal-scoring this season had already guaranteed next year’s promotion to Kreisliga A. However, Teuber still had one objective: to score his 100th goal! Sitting on 98 goals, Teuber had an awful day. He only scored one goal, which is almost three goals under his average.

Although his club still had one game left in the league, Teuber had already booked a trip for himself and his wife to travel to the Netherlands. He would not cancel the trip, although he sat at 99 goals, because he knew his wife would be angry at him. He also wouldn’t tell anyone where he was going, out of fear that someone would drive there and try to talk him into playing. However, at the last minute he changed his mind and came to his last game. He scored his 100th and 101st goals in the first half, subbed himself off at halftime, and drove back to his wife in the Netherlands to finish his vacation. Below is a short, low-quality video clip, showing Teuber score his 100th goal.

Remember Lewandoski’s five-goal performance in 2015? Well, Teuber also blew that out of the water this year. He scored twelve times in an 18:0 win over formidable SpVgg Horsthausen. What does he do to celebrate performances like this? Most nights, he has to report to work at 8:30 pm at the baking factory, where he works until 5:00 am the next morning.

With this, you must be asking yourself, why does he have to work another job? Or, what kind of bonuses does this guy get for scoring 101 goals in a season or twelve goals in one match? The answer is €0.00 ($0.00). You see, Kreisliga B1 Herne is part of Westphalia’s amateur-league system. Instead of earning money for his performances, Teuber said that there is usually “a case of beer or two from the club. That’s it.” On the overall German pyramid, Habinghorst is one of the numerous teams that makes up the tenth division. Teuber has received offers from higher leagues before, but he has turned them down. “I don’t have any desire for that. There you have to train too much and travel so far,” he said.

Unless someone can change his mind, it doesn’t look like we will see Teuber and Lewandowski play in the same league, so that we can compare apples to apples. But the numbers don’t lie: 101 > 22. Maybe hearing this will light a fire under Lewy for next season. I would hope that he would at least try to compete with Teuber! If not, Bayern is just wasting money... and beer!

Photo by Matthias Hangst/Getty Images